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Sunday, February 23, 2014

Lagoon, By David Chott

Humans, the newest species in Lagoon, the oldest land in
existence, strive to permanently alter the ancient world they inhabit. Through
the control and influence of the three energies of the earth they shape the
primeval landscape to fit their whims. You and your opponents must take up this
struggle against each other as you vie to establish a dominant energy, and
ultimately determine the fate of the world…

Full disclosure: David sent me a demo copy of Lagoon to
review after we recorded an episode of Back It!, our show about crowd-funded
gaming projects. I endeavor to keep my reviews biased only by my love for
gaming, but it’s possible a little of my respect for David has seeped into my
opinions about his first game. With that in mind, please join me on a spiritual
journey to the first forests in the magical world of Lagoon!

Lagoon is a game of worker-placement and world-building for
2-4 players. Each turn players use workers, called “Druids”, to take actions on
a game board composed of hexagon tiles, called “Sites”. The set of actions
available to players is determined by the sites that comprise the world, and
those sites are added, manipulated, and removed by players throughout the course
of the game. Each tile has two sites (one on each face), each of a different
color (red, yellow, or blue), that represents the three energies of the game.

Play begins with three sites on the board, one of each
energy type. One of these sites is a “haven”, an important site where new
druids enter the world when summoned. Each player starts with three druids on
the haven site, including one “Eldrid”
a unique druid that can activate special sites. Players also start with two
druids off the board, ready to be summoned.

At the beginning of each turn, players “refresh” up to three
druids. Players may then exhaust druids to take actions or invoke sites until
all druids on the board are exhausted, or until the player chooses to end the
turn. Though most of the actions available to players are related to the sites
in play, there are three basic actions always available:

Move:
A player may exhaust a druid to move it to an adjacent site

Summon:
A player may exhaust a druid to summon a druid (exhausted) to any haven site.
This ability can be used any number of times per turn, but only if the player
has fewer than five druids on the board.

Explore:
A player may exhaust a druid to take a new tile at random from the bag and place
it in on the board adjacent to the druid’s occupied site. The player chooses
the side of the tile to use, and may choose to move the exhausted druid to the
new site. Exploring may only be done once
per turn. After exploring, the player takes a “seed” of the energy associated with the site.

Prototype images taken from boardgamegeek.com

The seeds collected during exploration are worth 1 point
each, but only if the color of the seed matches the color of the dominant
energy when the game ends. This is half of the game’s scoring – the other half
is “unraveled” sites, those sites that are removed from the game as a result of
players’ action. Unraveling a site requires three available energy of a type
that corresponds to site’s profile – yellow sites require three red energy, red
sites require three blue energy, and blue sites require three yellow energy.

This “wheel” of energy types creates the central drama of the game, as
unraveled sites are worth 2 points each at the end of the game provided that
they’re of an energy type other than
the dominant energy. Players use unraveling not just to score potential points
later in the game, but also to promote a specific dominant energy type and
remove choices for their opponents.

Pro Tip: Gruu's Refuge is super good!

Here’s where the first unique mechanic in Lagoon is
introduced: unraveling doesn’t require that you “spend” anything other than
exhausting a druid on the tile you’d like to unravel. It requires that you have
three available energy of the necessary color, and this can happen in one of
two ways:

- You can spend seeds of the needed color/energy
type

- You can count sites of the appropriate
color/energy type on which you currently have at least one druid, whether
exhausted or not.

This means that the locations of your druids not only affect
the actions available to you, but also the energy available for unraveling,
which is by far the largest source of victory points in the game.

The second unique mechanic in Lagoon is the way in which
druids are interconnected. At any point, any of your druids may use sites that
any of your other druids occupy. This means that an exhausted druid on a new
tile isn’t useless – its presence provides the opportunity for other druids to
use the site’s ability. This provides a wealth of choices each turn, especially
as the world expands and sites are added to the board. Lagoon becomes a giant
puzzle, where each turn players work to identify the best way to take the most
beneficial actions.

The game ends when all sites have been added to the world,
after which the energy that has the most sites in the world (noted by the
colors of the tiles) is declared the dominant energy. The player most aligned
with the dominant energy - as measured by seeds of the dominant energy and
unraveled sites of the other two colors - is the winner, and is the master of
Lagoon!

Playing Lagoon felt a lot like completing a puzzle
competitively, or thinking through various choices in a game of Magic, Summoner
Wars, or Da Vinci. That’s a pretty varied group of comparable games, and I
wouldn’t say that Lagoon is like any
of those games; it just presents choices in ways that lead to strategic
thinking as a result of elegant design, much like many of my other favorites. Make
no bones about it, while Lagoon is wrapped in compelling theme and gorgeous
original art, it’s absolutely a game of strategy – one that’s earned a
permanent spot in my collection.